


Light

by Fullmetalruby



Category: Naruto
Genre: Back to my alltime favorite headcanon of, Happy halloween, Kashi and nardo are eldritch horrors, Original Characters - Freeform, Sumigakure Halloween Event 2017, Uzushiogakure Kakashi, no proofreading we publish our first drafts like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-08 08:24:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12250647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fullmetalruby/pseuds/Fullmetalruby
Summary: Written for the prompt "Eldritch Abominations""Kakashi doesn’t let his Light loose often, so to shed his skin twice in a day-- even if only a little bit-- gives him a high like no other. He lets a faint image of his wings burn into this reality and a million galaxies are reflected in his eyes. “Naruto is an Uzumaki through and through. There are certain differences you’ll just have to let me account for.” He creeps closer to the elders, speaking with more mouths with every word. “My mother once told me that when I was a baby I had a habit of forgetting I was supposed to be baby-shaped. My father was hardly allowed to look at me for fear of me blinding him by accident. I would hate to make the orphanage directors blind. And I would hate for you four to be responsible for it.”He returns to his form-- the silver hair that catches light a bit too well, the grey eye that sometimes doesn’t look grey, the pale skin that’s a bit too pale for anyone’s comfort. “I trust you to make the right decision.”The four elders consider for a moment. “Perhaps we can reach a compromise.”"





	Light

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so while the inspiration for this piece came from sumigakure, all my knowledge of Lovecraftian horrors came from wikipedia, TVTropes, and from the star wars fic 'wonderterror' by peradi. Please go check out the sumigakure tumblr and peradi's fic, both are absolutely amazing.  
> On with the show!

The first time Kakashi realize he’s different, he’s two years old. He’s very advanced for a two-year-old child, and many times the only thing that keeps people from assuming he’s older is his size (for all that he’s smart, he’s still tiny. Even for his age.)

He’s playing a few block away from his house, watching the older kids paint seals and make fish skeletons race across their makeshift lanes in the sand. One of the girls who isn’t racing is showing Kakashi and the other littles how to do the same thing by drawing with chalk on stones. Her name is Emi. She’s nice, and sometimes she babysits Kakashi when his parents are both out of the village.

She’s helping Tasuku and Sou-- Tasuku’s got the hang of it, but Sou is struggling with the more advanced seals-- and Kakashi reaches out to ask Emi if she’ll teach him too. She doesn’t notice when he taps her shoulder, or when he tugs at her sleeve.

He waves his hand in front of her face, letting the pads of his fingers crack and let out a little bit of light. The same way he gets his mother's attention. And Emi  _ screams _ .

This is also the first time he hurts someone. It will not be the last.

She falls to the ground, clutching at her eyes and screaming bloody murder. Sou grabs Kakashi around the shoulders and spins him around. “Kashi, what did you do?”

Kakashi shakes his head. “I didn’t mean to…” His eyes fill with tears. Sou looks around and whisks him away before anyone can do anything else.

The next thing Kakashi knows, he’s in his grandmother’s office, and he vaguely registers Sou spitting out a brief explanation of what happened before he leaves.

Izumi Uzumaki is older than she looks by a great deal. If she weren’t an Uzumaki, it’s very likely shat she would have a head of grey hair. But as it stands, she has red hair streaked with the silver of stress and all the lines around her eyes to match, with a fair number of laugh lines accompanying them. She has the air of a queen and all the grace that goes with it. She commands respect the moment she enters a room.

She is the Uzukage, and she is terrifying, but in this moment above all else she is Kakashi’s grandmother.

She moves swiftly around her desk and kneels in front of him. With one calloused hand she strokes his cheek and with the other she grasps his shoulder. His breath shudders for a moment, then he throws himself against her and sobs against her shoulder. She hugs him tightly and runs her hands through his hair, letting him cry into her favorite shirt while he apologizes. As he starts to calm down, she hums a soft lullaby to him.

When he’s finished crying, he sniffs and pulls away. She crosses her legs under her and gestures for him to sit on her lap. He does.

“Kakashi, I’m going to tell you a secret,” Izumi says, looking him in the eye. “The important kind. Do you understand?”

He nods. She smiles and takes his hand. Against hers, it’s like a starfish on a huge rock. “We Uzumaki are different from other people. Do you know why?”

“Because we live longer and use seals better,” he answers, barely wrapping his hand around two of her fingers.

Izumi bobs her head. “True. But that’s not the only reason.”

Kakashi looks up at her. “Why else?”

She then takes her other hand and cups now both of them around his own. “Kakashi, Uzumaki like you and me are different even from other Uzumaki. Us, your mother, your cousin Mirai, we all have something even more special inside us.” 

“What is it though?”

She brushes a lock of hair behind his ear. “‘Kashi, you hold more power in your little finger than the rest of your peers have in their whole bodies combined. You could destroy the village with less effort than it takes to pick up a pen.

“What you did to Emi may be alright to do with your mother or me, but not with anyone else. There are just some parts of you that people won’t understand. Those parts of you can hurt people, even if you don’t mean them to.”

Kakashi sniffs again. “Even Papa?”

Izumi smiles sadly at the boy in her lap. “Yes. Even your papa will never quite understand. You don’t know how many times I’ve had to step in between your parents when your mother is truly angry, because she can hurt him in ways that not a lot of other people can-- and not just because she knows him well. Please ‘Kashi, don’t let anyone else see your Light.”

So that’s how they start referring to it. The power under his skin is his Light. The eight sets of wings that sometimes appear on his back are his Light. His fifteen extra mouths that not everyone can see are his Light. The way his flesh splits and blood made of starfire sings in the air and blinds anyone else is his Light.

Emi stops coming over. Whenever she sees Kakashi at the market or in the library she quickly escapes as politely as possible. He can't fault her for it-- she's blind in one eye now, and it's his fault. 

Sakumo knows about Kakashi’s Light. He says that his mother’s version of the Light is her Song. Yes, Rie Uzumaki is different in more ways than one. One time Izumi tells Kakashi about how Rie’s Song has too many legs to count and can move faster than anything else in the world. She loves to wander the earth and visit every place there is to visit and then some.

Izumi likes to tell stories, about when the Different Uzumaki (though they were not known as such then) used to roam the stars and bring life and death and destruction and creation wherever they went. They were worshipped as gods and reviled like demons. But above all they were wanderers, and they were all-powerful. They used to be so strong, so glorified, so  _ known _ , and they used to be allowed to be so, so beautiful.

Both Rie and Izumi are still beautiful, even as they die.

When Rie falls to the blade of a Kiri-nin, the world screeches and everyone on earth must be covering their ears. Her skin burns away until there’s nothing left but a writhing mass of starlight and fire and Being and then there is nothing. For a titanic instant, Rie is Everything and then she is gone. Izumi follows a few minutes later.

Kakashi supposes that he should cry at the deaths of his mother and grandmother, but instead he feels joy in knowing that they have been returned to the Everything. When he meets his aunt Kushina a few days later, it is with the same joy that she greets them.

“You must be Kakashi!” She squeals, spinning him in a circle as though she hasn’t just lost her sister and mother. Kushina looks just like Rie in this form, Kakashi thinks. He wonders if she looks the same in her version of Light or Song.

_ YOUR SOUL BURNS WITH THE INTENSITY OF A THOUSAND SUNS, NEPHEW. I WELCOME YOU GLADLY INTO MY DOMAIN _

Kakashi is not the only Different Uzumaki to escape the fall. Among the others are his cousin Mirai and her newborn daughter Yiru.

Kushina though, is a special kind of different. This is something Kakashi learns quickly, under his aunt’s tutelage. She speaks with her normal mouth to most people, and sometimes even to Kakashi, but when she has something important to say she likes to speak with her millions of other mouths that no-one else could see.

It’s no wonder why she doesn’t have any pets. They were a rarity in Uzushio too, which was easily explained away as “ _ well, our village is completely underwater, so, _ ” but the Kushina Uzumaki that she presents is the kind of person who would love animals. Every time one of her multitudes of friends-- Mikoto Uchiha in particular, who seems to have a different cat in her arms every time Kakashi sees her-- comes over with an animal, Kushina politely stops writing seals with her hundreds of hands and speaks only with the mouth on her pretty human face.

The teachers at the academy don't appreciate the fact that he's six years old and ready to graduate. They a think he's too young, he hasn't spent enough time under their tutelage. But his grades and the elders disagree, so as a last resort they shove him with the only new genin team leader who might know what to do with him.

Kushina has been sweet on Minato Namikaze for longer than Kakashi's known her, and he can't wait for the look on his aunt's face when she comes to pick him up after training, she’s been gone for two months on a mission and just got back today--

She sees Minato, but she doesn't smile. Instead she's grimacing and silent. But Kakashi hears her.

_ YOUR FOOLISH FATHER IS DEAD BY HIS OWN HAND, NEPHEW. LOOK PROPERLY AGGRIEVED WHEN I TELL YOU. _

Sakumo’s mission went wrong last week, and war is nigh, but Kakashi can't fathom his father’s reasoning for suicide. Whatever happens, Kakashi can protect his father. He can protect all of Konoha. That's all that should have mattered.

Kushina takes Minato gently by the arm and whispers to him with her pretty mouth, speaks of something she “doesn’t” want Kakashi to hear. Minato gasps and covers his mouth with one hand. Then she kneels close to Kakashi and tells him in a soft and shaking voice that Sakumo Hatake is gone and Kakashi will be living with her from now on. Kakashi lets his shoulders tremble and sniffs like he did when he was two in his grandmother’s office.

He is led home by the shoulder, and his father is still dead on the floor of his room.

Kakashi has never seen a dead body before. Not a human one, anyway. Rie and Izumi both burned away their delicate forms when they died, then dissipated into nothingness. So Sakumo is the first dead human he sees, and this shakes him more than the fact that it is his father.

Kakashi acts differently after this, even if he isn’t sad, He acts differently because the rhythm of Kushina and Mikoto’s apartment is different from the rituals of the Hatake household, and this makes a difference to him. Mikoto knows about Kushina’s Shadow but she doesn’t Know. She knows that Kakashi is much the same as his aunt but she has never seen either of their Different forms. There is no space here to let out even one pair of wings, even when he’s alone. Not if he wants his abilities to remain hidden.

This is something that Kakashi finds strange. The people of Konoha find it easy to forget just how much Uzumaki is in him, how much of their blood and their rituals and their traditions. Even though everyone passes off the stories of Uzumaki breaking out of their skins into shapeless clouds of fury and righteous bloodshed as just stories, everyone knows to be wary of them. But people have never counted Kakashi among the Uzumaki number.

Obito is especially bad at this. He sees the silver hair and the grey eyes and the pale skin and thinks ‘Hatake’, and is always surprised when Kushina comes to pick Kakashi up or when the Uchiha sees his tattoos or he pulls an especially infuriating move invented by the Uzumaki. He hates Kakashi’s proficiency in seals.

In Obito’s last moments-- crushed under a rock like some kind of bug, Rin sobbing at his side-- as all humans do, he sees Kakashi in all his Different glory. He sees the wings and the teeth and the burning blood and the galaxies swirling to life on his skin.

It’s pathetic, the way the proud Uchiha scion offers up his eye as though it will save him from the form of Death he believes Kakashi to be. When Rin fixes the new eye into Kakashi’s head, reality screams because even horrors like Kakashi have always been constant, they have always been unknowable, they have always been ignorable, and this one bit of humanity in someone like Kakashi forces the Powers That Be to acknowledge this being that could tear them down with less than a wandering thought.

It will be eight more years before anything of note happens. Kakashi’s body ages, grows, hurts, but his spirit is infinitely old and infinitely young all at once and time doesn’t quite mean as much to him as it does to Minato or Gai. 

He is twelve when Kushina finally seduces Minato. It’s not often that Kakashi gets to see the face of a man whose grasp on reality has just been broken, so he drinks in the situation whenever he gets the chance.

“So, sensei,” Kakashi starts, long and lanky for his age (such a departure from the tiny boy who could fit three of himself in the circle of his father’s arms) leaning against the kitchen counter. This is his third cup of coffee this morning. It will not be his last.

Minato looks at Kakashi with hollow eyes. He is a man broken. Kakashi smiles. “Your aunt, she’s…”

“She’s something, isn’t she?” Kakashi finishes. Minato looks up in shock.

“You knew?”

Kakashi laughs. He lets his not-human eye turn into a sun. “Why sensei, how could you forget? Me and Kushina aren’t faking being related, after all.”

Minato groans and faceplants into the floor. Kushina laughs, and the world shivers.

He is thirteen when Kushina falls pregnant. He is fourteen when Minato and Kushina die.

But Kushina doesn’t die in the same way as her family. She doesn’t break, her Shadow stays beneath her skin, but she has a second wonderterror within her that she seals within her son.

Kushina and Minato’s son. Naruto. Within ten minutes of his birth, the baby’s form breaks open and the concentrated sunshine of his soul flares into the cave where Kakashi’s aunt gave birth. Mikoto, Kushina’s closest friend right up until the end, screams as Emi Narae once screamed at the sight of an Uzumaki’s Differences. She scrabbles at her eyes as they bleed, and Kakashi whisks the child a safe distance away before Naruto can do any more harm. Warily, he lets out a little bit of his Light to calm Naruto down.

The next morning, in Minato and Kushina’s house, the council confronts Kakashi.

Utatane speaks first. “The child cannot stay with you, Hatake. He cannot be placed with anyone who was close to his parents.”

Mitokado is next. “The child is a weapon, as his mother was. He can’t be attached to anything or anyone.”

The Hokage speaks last, and with more reverence for the dead. “It was Minato’s wish that Naruto be regarded as a hero for being the Kyuubi’s Jinchuuriki. We can’t honor that if he’s in your care.”

Only Danzo is silent.

Kakashi doesn’t let his Light loose often, so to shed his skin twice in a day-- even if only a little bit-- gives him a high like no other. He lets a faint image of his wings burn into this reality and a million galaxies are reflected in his eyes. “Naruto is an Uzumaki through and through. There are certain differences you’ll just have to let me account for.” He creeps closer to the elders, speaking with more mouths with every word. “My mother once told me that when I was a baby I had a habit of forgetting I was supposed to be baby-shaped. My father was hardly allowed to look at me for fear of me blinding him by accident. I would hate to make the orphanage directors blind. And I would hate for you four to be responsible for it.”

He returns to his form-- the silver hair that catches light a bit too well, the grey eye that sometimes doesn’t look grey, the pale skin that’s a bit too pale for anyone’s comfort. “I trust you to make the right decision.”

The four elders consider for a moment. “Perhaps we can reach a compromise.”

And the compromise is this; Kakashi will be allowed to raise Naruto until he knows how to be human all the time, and when the time comes Kakashi will be responsible for Naruto’s, ah,  _ specialized _ training. It's more than Kushina and Minato told him to expect, should the need arise.

Naruto Uzumaki, like his mother before him, bears two souls inside him. One is larger by far than the other, and it's the one that makes him too bright to look at and sound like too many children at once. It's the one full of lightning and wind and static noise and more power than any baby has a right to hold.

Whenever Kakashi takes Naruto out, he’s told by his aunt's friends that the baby looks just like Minato. Kakashi disagrees.

One night, Kakashi comes home from a mission and dismisses his cousin Mirai (Mirai of the summer storm, who bleeds the ocean and clouds and has voices like thunder. She also happens to have a newborn son that Naruto gets along with swimmingly.) Naruto is two, and he's gotten better at knowing when to be a person and when to be a formless being of sunshine and blood.

Kakashi takes his little cousin in his arms and up to the roof, and looks at him with an eye turned starbright and black. The other eye (some twisted human part that Kakashi has never quite meshed with himself, a part that came from a dying boy afraid of the abomination that stood before him) sits a lazy red in the other socket.

_ YOU ARE MORE LIKE YOUR MOTHER THAN YOU WILL EVER KNOW, LITTLE WONDERTERROR. ONE DAY YOU WILL BE ALLOWED TO SHINE, AND WHEN YOU DO I AM SURE YOU WILL BE OUT THERE- _ he looks up to the sky and Naruto follows his gaze, his bright blue eyes turned mirrors to some distant unknown sky-  _ AND YOU WILL BE DEVOURING GALAXIES LIKE CANDY AND YOU WILL BE THE FIRST TRULY WANDERING UZUMAKI IN A LONG TIME. THE UNIVERSE WILL REMEMBER YOU FOR YOUR VOICE AND YOUR UNSTOPPABLE POWER. YOU WILL NEVER BE FORGOTTEN _

**Author's Note:**

> There may end up being a sequel/second chapter to this, but remembering my terrible track record with multiple installments, it's still a definite maybe.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [To the Heavens and Beyond (Eldritch Mantle's Donned)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13617468) by [OnceABlueMoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnceABlueMoon/pseuds/OnceABlueMoon)




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